Posted on by Abe Austin

Overwhelming Passion

We have many stories of people who are in want of strength, who plead for the Lord to empower them for the task ahead, and so it is in some cases. However, many of us carry a burden that is exactly the opposite. We have been given a passion that is too powerful for us to handle on their own.

If we turn that passion to self-indulgence it damages us with its overpowering stream. if we try to ignore it, it builds up pressure until it bursts out in painful ways. This passion could be a great gift, but it will instead be a great danger if we never learn what to do with it.

God gave us this passion so that we are meant to do with it is pour it back into Him. He is not only the well that forever gives He is also the well that can forever take. Only into Him can we safely disperse our passion, our energy, and our drive, and not be harmed by the flowing power.

We were never designed to operate on our own. God made us with oversized hearts so that we can fit the extra parts into Him.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 3:16-17

16 And the priest shall burn them upon the altar: it is the food of the offering made by fire for a sweet savour: all the fat is the Lord’s.

17 It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.

This chapter ends with an interesting aside, where the Lord gives a commandment to the Israelites. Parts of these animals were never to be consumed by the Israelites. The Israelites were forbidden from consuming the blood of the animal, and from eating the fat. And it doesn’t seem to be because these parts were unclean or evil, but because they instead belonged to the Lord.

From other verses it is made clear that the blood was seen as containing the life itself of the animal. It was the sacred, animating factor that turned the creature from a heap of flesh and bones to a moving, acting thing. The fat, being the richest part of the animal, represented passion, energy, and drive. Thus, the animating factor in our lives, and our passion, energy, and drive, are to be seen as belonging to the Lord, not ourselves. We should not give our passion and life to our own desires, but reserve them for the higher purposes of God.

I don’t think that is just about reserving the best of ourselves for God. That could certainly be a part of it, but I believe it is also because the forces of life and passion are too strong for us to handle on our own. They are simply too potent, too powerful. We become drunk on our own passion and we flail about, trying to find some well that is deep enough to hold them. And so, we end up indulging in addiction, gambling, unsafe sex, vanity, greed, endless partying, and false causes. They are attractive to us because they are bottomless pits that we can pour our life and passion into forever, never mind the fact that they are unworthy vessels.

Thousands of years ago God showed His people a different endless well that we could pour their lives and passion into: Him. Just as the Israelites were warned not to try and stomach the fat and blood of the animal, but to surrender it to God instead, we are meant to direct our greatest energy and vitality to His cause, and it will be for our own good.

SacrificeEligible oblationStepsExplanation
Peace OfferingCattle, Lamb, GoatGratitude for reconciliation
Animal is slainGiving up old life for one of unity with another
Fat burned on altarGiving up old plans, passions, and drives

Full table.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Ascend, Decline, or Plateau- Quiet Times

Heated then Cooled)

Thus far I have shared from my story how I appeared to be on a spiritual plateau to any outside onlooker, but that in reality I was in a sharp moral decline with a secret addiction, how this came to an abrupt end when I had a truly redemptive experience which made making spiritual changes and progression natural and full of joy. However, that isn’t the end of my journey either.

After the time of spiritual awakening and rapid improvement, I must confess that the passion waned within me. I truly wanted to keep that passion alive, and did many things to try and prolong it, but it was like trying to hold water in my hands, and in the end it trickled away.

That isn’t to say that I went back to a place of steep moral decline, however. Nor is it to say that I never experienced spiritual passion again afterwards. Rather, I entered a cycle of occasional bursts of passion, followed by long periods of quiet ritual.

Bursts of Passion)

The bursts of passion most often seem to come when I have some sort of breakthrough, a key paradigm shift that alters my entire view of life and myself. As it turns out, there are a number of misconceptions and misalignments that I have held, most often learned subliminally from my culture, which have had to be corrected one-at-a-time to unlock higher levels of connection with God.

One example of this has been correcting my views on marriage. Even though I always knew that the world’s view of marriage was improper and disparaging, even though I always knew that the union was truly sacred, I was still being skewed in my heart by the deluge of worldly messages that marriage was transactional, that the concerns of the individual were superior to those of the marriage itself, and that the bond was flimsier than those to a child or even a friend.

When I recognized these flawed paradigms within me, and by the help of God corrected them, my connection and commitment to the Lord surged forward again, and ever since I have realized that identifying and correcting these misalignments is one of the surest ways to natural improvement. Finding and fixing them is one of the greatest quests of my life now, perhaps the greatest of them all.

Quiet Ritual)

It must be acknowledged that epiphanies are rare, though. Would that every day could have a new one, but that has not been my experience. I wonder if it is not according to God’s plan that we both have the capacity for moments of spiritual epiphany and also the tendency to fall back into complacency. Perhaps he meant for us to learn how to make the best use of both.

The best way to use moments of passion and epiphany, so far as I can tell, is to establish lasting changes and begin good habits. The best way to handle the longer stretches of cooler temperament, so far as I can tell, is to turn those habits into daily ritual, leaning on them to keep us consistent with the truths we learned in our passion.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Give Thanks- Passion

I am grateful for passion.

People have an amazing capacity for doing extremely difficult things, so long as they are motivated by a pure desire. While having a hardship imposed on us by another is a terrible thing to bear, imposing our own hardships to accomplish something we are passionate for is a privilege!

Our greatest desires are a joyful irritant, they constantly discontent us with things as they are and convince us that they should be made better. From this restless desire for improvement has come the idea that a country could be run by a democracy, that a better painting material could be derived from oils, and that people could fly in machines. And while these accomplishments were the greatest revelation anyone could hope for in their day, the next generations were restless again to improve on them.

And so democracy is extended to people of every race, hospitals develop better sanitation, and technology connects more and more people together. We take the good that we already have and are driven to push it farther. Just because we want to. Just for our own personal satisfaction. What a wonderful system has been written into each of us, that we make the world a better place just by pursuing the most genuine desires of our hearts.

#givethanks